Seeing the Dead (photo story)

In efficient capitalist societies they remove the unsuccessful from the neighborhoods of the better off almost as quickly as they remove the dead. In Guanajuato, city officials also wanted the indigent dead out of the municipal cemetery.

The stiffs were leaned up against the interior walls of a nearby building and the curious were charged a few pesos to view them. These deadbeats did not have to be trashed now that they were able to earn their keep.

To curtail a premature internment the rich sometimes had a cord strung through a hole drilled into their caskets. If they pulled the cords, bells mounted outside their tombs would ring. It is from these affluent tombs, not from the boxing ring, that we got the phrase, “saved by the bell.”